Good Evening, all. I trust you've managed your affairs quite well in my absence. I have been sufficiently preoccupied with the beginning of a business position, an excursion to the easterly coast of my fair country, and my own introspection to have entirely missed a total of twelve or thirteen pages of the thread in the past week and a half, notably including the climactic two-thousandth page. Consequently, my next few hours will be entirely devoted to the reunification of my personal frame of reference with the thread's ostensible present, as a combination of personal narrative and our colloquial "ketchup" styled responses. I fear that my writing style and text distribution will be sufficiently thick that few will read it in full, but at this point I have resigned myself to this eventuality and will merely do my best to mitigate its density with occasional text decorative effects.

Personal Context

Spoiler:

When last we spoke[1], I was just out of school for the beginning of the summer break. My spirits were lifting from my crisis of—well—whatever it was, and I'd been contemplating my next moves. Quoth Azule, "It's like driving a car...Now driving is scary and you don't want to fall asleep at the wheel, metaphorically and literally."[2] An apt metaphor, and one on which I have dwelt for some time, especially in consideration of towards where to continue. This, in tandem with other contemplations after my scheduled meeting with another human being (thanks for inquiring, Aluisio[3]), has occupied my mind quite a lot in recent days. Luckily, I was shortly engaged in much more useful efforts at my new internship, where I am learning about such fun concepts as MVVM, PHI, how to perform useful work on a VM, and which floor has the best-stocked refrigerators. After two days of this, my work was interrupted by a national conference which could not be skipped, as I had qualified in three different events at the state level. This conference was largely spent sleeping (in hotel rooms or during lengthy general sessions), battling other digital characters in a virtual arena as Charizard, and regretting the weather in Washington DC.

On OTTers and Interest—MistyCat

Spoiler:

Meanwhile in the thread, life continued as usual. Wipends slow down, OTTers are overly analytical, and life feels good. MistyCat gives us an interesting take on interest[4], regarding which I'd like to go into more detail. Usually, interest is compounded like so: A = P(1 + r/n)n•t where A is the total amount of money accumulated, P is the principal amount, r is the annual interest rate, n is the number of times compounded per year, and t is the time elapsed (in years). According to this model, interest compounded for n = { 1, 2, 12, 365, 31536000 } times per year on an account with $100 at a rate of 10% or 0.1, yields the following amounts after 1 year:

As a matter of fact, as n approaches infinity, the interest equation approaches the continuous interest function: A = P•er•t, which yields just the same thing as large numbers for n. As you can see, the gains for using continuous interest over annually compounded interest are modest, but perhaps better for larger sums of money over larger periods of time (children or grandchildren of a millionaire whose accounts gave a continuously compounded 10% interest rate would find themselves billionaires a hundred years later—not accounting for inflation, of course—and twice as rich as if the account had been compounded annually).

Continuing on, jimbobmacdoodle visited the sea, and he provided a lovely image of Britain's part of the Earth's crust passing out of direct illumination by the sunlight, which is at the time scattered by passing through more layers of air molecules than usual[5]. Mikrit revealed he has an adopted daughter[6], about which I am intrigued, for my younger sister is adopted (we were originally planning to adopt from China, but switched to Cambodia at the last minute). Shortly after, Patzer indicated he was born in 1998, making him approximately a year younger than I[7]. How interesting. Apparently this information was available in an Otherthread[8], but I wouldn't have seen it, given how I have not even had time for the One True thread in recent days. Aluisio's signature is complimented as the most cryptic[9] in response to the appearance of mine—if it's not to late, I'd point out to macraw that my changes were of a confused-introspective-comedic take, and that our regularly scheduled programming has returned. Perhaps with some slight differences.

On Cryptic Narrative—Aluisio

Spoiler:

In regards to Aluisio's story, mrob helpfully compounded the entries and revealed details in a more cohesive summary[10]; this struck me as being not unlike annotations on old texts, which can sometimes be as significant to the reading as the text itself. After much celebration for the two-thousandth newpage, Aluisio revealed some more context for the narrative[11]. I'm quite curious to see where this goes.

On Television and Childhood

Spoiler:

There was some discussion of childhood television memories, where TMNT and Thomas the Tank Engine are brought up—both shows I know quite well, but never really saw as a child. My parents did not really much encourage the watching of TV, but shows that stand out in my memory are Dexter's Laboratory, American Dragon Jake Long (though I was possibly exposed to this a bit later in age than the discussion covers), and Danny Phantom. On the subject of Thomas, however, I've seen quite a few episodes; my aunt and uncle put it on for my younger cousin quite often when they're around, as they have for the last 12 or so years—he has fairly extreme autism, so his interests don't change much.

Some Book Recommendations

Spoiler:

Then the conversation turned towards books[12], and I feel obligated to mention the coincidence that I've been reading a lot of Terry Pratchett recently on recommendation from somewhere in this thread. I'm also reading a book called Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell, about two English magicians during the Napoleonic Wars. It's told partly in the style of a historical account, partly in the style of a novel, and the voice is phenomenal—I'd swear that the author was actually from the mid 1800s, and not from the 2000s. And I can't bring up book recommendations without once again heartily suggesting the Temeraire novels for any fantasy/historical fiction fans or anyone who reads for fun.

On Personal Affairs and Relationships—BlueCrab, Aluisio

Spoiler:

And of course I couldn't get away so easily—BlueCrab repeated Aluisio's inquiry about my dateomorphic encounter[13], to which I now feel obligated to respond. It went pretty well, I think—she and I have similar personalities, and though our interests differ a bit I think they could complement each other pretty well. Thus far we're still on "getting to know each other" terms, but I think we both implicitly agreed to continue the relationship at a slow pace. And not to trust implicit agreements (too many have been known to morph quickly into the dreaded "assumption", and only cause issues for everyone), we will continue communication on Steam and arrange further coattendance at our next convenience.

On Canines and Ursidae—SBN

Spoiler:

I don't have much to say about the next couple of newpages, except in response to SBN's fear of bear fear troubles[14]—we have some bears in our neighborhood, and we're worried that our little dog (chihuaua/pomeranian/cocker spaniel/boston terrier/schanuzer mutt) will try to chase them down and get herself hurt, because as far as we know she literallyproper usage has no fear; she often tries to take down dogs that are 3 times her size. Come to think of it, though, she actually looks a bit like a bear cub—maybe the bear would be confused and try to adopt her.

And as I hit the end of newpage 2007, I achieve copresence in the current temporal manifold with the rest of the thread, and all is well once more. I am happy to have had the pleasure of this ketchup session, and would quite enjoy doing so again another time—indeed, I might go so far as to give it an A++. Out of 10. Would ketchup again. Until then, my dear OTTers, I shall accompany you all on your adventures in the present time.Warmest regards,

ergman wrote:CD, that might have been one of my favorite regular posts ever. Mundane and yet majestic. congrats on your datey thingy, and good choice of project M character!Good Evening.

To be honest, Charizard is a bit OP comparatively speaking. But it was okay, because I'm not a very seasoned Brawl or Project-M player, and I was playing against more experienced competitors. I also brawled a bit with R.O.B. and King Dedede and tried out a few others, but recovery can be quite difficult depending on the character.

And man, ch*irpin' Kirby. Or at least, the way one of the competitors was playing him—waiting next to the edge until someone came over, then attempting to suck them up and eject them into the abyss. Same went for Yoshi, but Kirby did it more.

ergman wrote:CD, that might have been one of my favorite regular posts ever. Mundane and yet majestic. congrats on your datey thingy, and good choice of project M character!Good Evening.

To be honest, Charizard is a bit OP comparatively speaking. But it was okay, because I'm not a very seasoned Brawl or Project-M player, and I was playing against more experienced competitors. I also brawled a bit with R.O.B. and King Dedede and tried out a few others, but recovery can be quite difficult depending on the character.

And man, ch*irpin' Kirby. Or at least, the way one of the competitors was playing him—waiting next to the edge until someone came over, then attempting to suck them up and eject them into the abyss. Same went for Yoshi, but Kirby did it more.

Huh. upon looking up the tiers, Charizard is mid, as is ROB, my favorite. There was going to be something related, but I don't remember what. uh... cueball mii for smash 4!

ChronosDragon wrote:Aluisio's signature is complimented as the most cryptic in response to the appearance of mine

[assuming I'm interpreting this correctly] I hate to disappoint people, but it wasn't because of yours ― I was avatar- and signature-less by the time the story began. I couldn't have an avatar per chapter, but I could have a signature for each one.

ChronosDragon wrote:I'm quite curious to see where this goes.

Unfortunately that'll take some time, as 1) an alternative future has appeared to me, and I have to evaluate how it interferes with the distant future; 2) having included myself in the story, I have to make sure it doesn't become a story about me; and 3) I'm having lots of fun in the near-future with AFC.

On the subject of childhood shows: Teletubbies and SpongeBob SquarePants (broadcast TV), GhostBusters and MIB and something spacey with giant bugs when at grandpa's home (broadcast satellite), and most important:

1) I vote for the ‘play D&D’ and then ‘explode things with the Mythbusters’ kind of party! 2) Ack! Jose, you did it again! ) There, all fixed now.

taixzo wrote:I guess I've joined the second party then by default.

Neat, c'mon in - we have a spare set of dice here somewhere! Have a Mountain Dew Code Red. The Pepsi for the Mythbusters gig is over there; don't eat all the Mentos, they're for that, too! Oh - you have to make your own seat out of duct tape or frozen newspapers, that's all outside in the Lucky shed...

mrob wrote: Someone who knows a right-to-left language (like Hebrew or Arabic) might enjoy making a sentence that makes sense in both languages, and where each of the two languages seems to be at the beginning of the sentence.

Wow, would that ever be Neat! I know layered word play is done with Japanese (and Chinese?), does anymolpy know a right-to-left language?

ucim wrote:

HES wrote:New OtherComic, which means it isn't UserSubmissionDay like I thought. Problematic.

... and the "Updates Monday, Wednesday, and Friday" is now missing from the home page.

Must not panic. Must not panic! There was an OtherComic on Fridip, and a new one yesterdip (today's Tuesdip). IF THERE ISN'T A NEW OTHERCOMIC TOMMORIP I'M GOING TO PANIC (update Wednesdip night before posting: not panicking yet)

AUTOMOME wrote:I HAVE REPORTED YOU TO BUNNY FOR STEALING NEWPICES AS IT IS A CRIME

Why is it always Bunny who gets reported to? Is xe the Enforcer of the Forty?

ggh wrote:

azule wrote:The first party is where all the girls get drunk and topless. The second one is where all the nerds play D&D and enjoy the night with friends. Choose wisely.

To me, the OTT is both parties. I'm here, enjoying the night with friends, and most of the time I'm drunk and topless.

Literally :azule:ing here Update!(Possible TMI)

Spoiler:

ggh wrote:... it's just not the definition of "drunk" you were thinking it was.

Organized sand is a godsend for nursing mothers! In the long-ago, all you could do was read or watch TV with no sound. Now you can also go online, if you're reasonably ambidextrous! (Yes, one does spend a lot of nursing time staring into the babbie's eyes, stroking their silken skin, marveling at their tiny selves. But the baby gets bored before you do, if the mutual adoration goes on too long. At some point, you've got to do something to stay awake, even if it means screwing up your solitaire stats.)

Re Raiders of the Lost Ark

moody wrote:Spoiler alert: In the current revision, the sword guy has a gun he shoots at Indy before Indy shoots him.

What?! But that takes all of the impact away! I am disappoint.

Aluisio wrote:

ucim wrote:You have a replacement for your penis? I'm not sure I want to know about this.

No I don't. But I've never had one to begin with.

...and now I am confuse?

mrob wrote:INSTANT MOLPYSNAKE, JUST ADD RICE

Yes, I am definitely now confuse.

Maybe my brain is melting from the heat and humidity? It's Rand-ch*rping hot out here. Sorry, vvn - it's supposed to cool down (relatively, anyway) for a dip or two, then go right back to disgusting just in Time for your next journey out this way. Don't it just figure?

If anyone (Blitzing, probably) has noticed that the old newpix-o-meters have gone down, don't worry. I recently moved most of my site to an Amazon server in the cloud and the parts that weren't moved are inaccessible for some reason (something to do with the way apache handles routing based on subdomain names, or something along those lines). I'm working on recreating the clock drawing functions in the node.js wrapper for gd, and will have them probably ready some time tomorrow.

ETA: v1 is done.

ETA2: Aaaand v2.

Hmm. The volume of requests from this forum might be more than my t1.micro server can handle. If someone knows about cheap node.js hosting, can you PM me?

Welcome back ChronosDragon! Sounds like you had some molpish custard in the Outside. I'm not sure if that's heresy or not, but I'm glad you enjoyed it.

BlueCrab wrote:1) I vote for the ‘play D&D’ and then ‘explode things with the Mythbusters’ kind of party! 2) Ack! Jose, you did it again! ) There, all fixed now.

Um....1(2((You think you could just slip that by?

Whoa! Cueball speaks Beanish!

"island"? "home"? "we are here"?

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Heartfelt thanks from addams and from me - you really made a difference.

ggh - I really like your tintpix. Very subtle, but also, it feels like that's how it'd look in color. Probably due to magic. (It would be umbrellaish to tell me your secrets so that I might include them in my own nighttimecolpix.)

ggh:

Spoiler:

Are you kidding me?! That's, like, real life. Like, possible. That would be...neat.

gg...h. I think this might be your NP. *cough* anyways, "Did you know hamplies are illegal in New Zealand?" - "You wouldn't steal a car! You wouldn't own a hamply!" (This is those movie stealing warning meme thingie thing.)

oldpixbot - Nice animated UNGing on the meteor frames!

Aluisio "Did you, by any chance, forgot a ‘ch’ in there?" - If I did, I've forgotten about it.

tresoldi wrote:As usual, you seem to be right.

tresoldi! I didn't think I'd be hearing from you so soon. Welcome back, basementee/lurker! Thanks for backing up my finding.

BlueCrab - Nice Thus... tangent!

ED "I don't think that's how mating actually works." - Y'all do know that I was joking, yes? I was trying to justify my millenial celebration comment by finding something true about NP2000's happenings. That's as close as I could get. And yes, I know that's now how mating works. (But then why do they try?)

Paraphrase of what I wrote:morobu-san? Since you have pretty much the same phone as me would you walk me through installing this?

mrob27, hereafter known as Guider of Crabs, wrote:It turns out that my script was based on a bookmarklet (JavaScript in a bookmark) and bookmarklets work in iOS Safari! So, without further ado, the steps:Select and copy the collowing text: <snippage of clear, detailed steps on how to install mrob's mobile What-If ALT text revealer> [*]Celebrate!

Morobu walks up to the shore and checks the water just to be sure. Pfffth!. Yup, it's salty.A salt lake in the crater of Mt. Fuji? But there ought to be snow this time of year! Then he sees a large container ship on the horizon. No, this water is big. I've found the sea, all right. It has been only three days since he stepped out of the raptorcatbus, and Morobu knows that the only sea close enough to reach by foot in that time is the northeast shore of Suruga Bay between 富士市, (Fuji City) and Izu. Morobu is at wit's end. I've been going up the whole time! He doesn't want to break the rules, but nothing here makes sense. Looking down at the water, he calls out (to nobody in particular). "I can't climb the sea ... but if I don't figure this out, I'll have to give up my quest!" Now he notices, in the shallow water to his right, a blue heikegani. She pops her eye-stalks up, sees Morobu, and scuttles out onto the sand. The little crab speaks. "May I help you?" Kneeling and bowing, Morobu speaks to her. "おはよう. Thank you, but I'm not sure if you should. My name is 守炉部二十七, and I am a Searchfu pilgrim. What is your name, little blue crab?" The little crab smiles, and somehow manages a bow. "Ah, it is BlueCrab. Easy, huh?"

mrob27 wrote: It's odd loving a sport wherein a nil-nil draw is considered an admirable achievement...

Which sport would that be?

I don't know. I'm from that country where they don't seem to be able to remember what the sport is called. (But I think my point about watching them kick the ball around for 1 1/2 nopix and still have no score was pretty well illustrated by the two greatmatches on TuesdayH (and I also like @HES's clever response ) )

ChronosDragon wrote:On Cryptic Narrative—Aluisio

Spoiler:

In regards to Aluisio's story, mrob helpfully compounded the entries and revealed details in a more cohesive summary［10］; this struck me as being not unlike annotations on old texts, which can sometimes be as significant to the reading as the text itself.

I'd say my list of links is useful, but my summary of the story is probably not...

@BlueCrab, I hope it's okay that I made you into a Japanese Samurai crab, and glad to hear the ALT text revealer bookmarklet is working!

Ah yes. This is the one I created that was generated when Time *nded, so the countdown is a bit off. Actually more like a lot off. Maybe I'll parameterize it for later use. Anyway, on to v5!....tomorrow, it's pretty late. Molpy down!

Neil_Boekend wrote:Will the next what if be "what if I adopted a puppy?"?

What if everyone adopted a puppy. At the same time.

Newspaper and plastic bags would suddenly be in short supply.Nice ketchup this morning. Wipend starts todip, though it looks like the fireworks tonight may get rained out. But the parade in the morning should have really nice weather, thanks to Arthur.

mscha wrote:RAVONGLY...

Who said that? And what did they say?

astrotter wrote:It is not particularly clear to me at this time that we are not overanalyzing this...

Randalspeed thunk, iskinner, and other blitzers! Notes from the before-was improve the after-when. Some Ways to Time

BlueCrab wrote:... the Forum quickly surpasses FourChan as an anarchist's playground. The nerds realize this, and without the Mods to control them they Take Over the World. They eliminate the millenium bug by wiping the numeral 2 from existence. The resulting binary bias becomes so entrenched that people forget how to perceive colors and the world changes to black and white (like it was back in the day.). Several thousand years from now the Straits of Gibraltar become blocked. Thus Begins Time.

This is one of the few times when I visibly laughed at a comment on the OTT. Luckily I was able to keep it very low-key, but still if anyone had been watching me on the bus when I read it, no doubt there would have been some strange looks.

BlueCrab wrote:

taixzo wrote:I guess I've joined the second party then by default.

Neat, c'mon in - we have a spare set of dice here somewhere!

Here you go:

You can use a regular 6-sided die to simulate a die of any number of sides if needed as well. Careful with it though, it's quite big.

Mrob: I have no idea where you are going with your story, but I am enjoying it all the same.

I missed the opportunity to make this reference when Cueganzzle were out on the boat earlier, but I'll make it now: I wonder where they'll float next? Also why can't they stay on the island. It's not like it's THAT dangerous. Right?

Probably a reference to hull speed, which is a sort-of terminal velocity for water. "Hull speed" is (sort of) the maximum speed that a boat can be propelled through water; it depends on the length and shape of the hull. As you approach hull speed, it takes more and more energy to go just a little bit faster.

Falling through the water probably happens close to hull speed.

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Heartfelt thanks from addams and from me - you really made a difference.

Probably a reference to hull speed, which is a sort-of terminal velocity for water. "Hull speed" is (sort of) the maximum speed that a boat can be propelled through water; it depends on the length and shape of the hull. As you approach hull speed, it takes more and more energy to go just a little bit faster.

Falling through the water probably happens close to hull speed.

Jose

Unless you cheat with a hydrofoil.

Mikeski wrote:A "What If" update is never late. Nor is it early. It is posted precisely when it should be.

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Heartfelt thanks from addams and from me - you really made a difference.

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Heartfelt thanks from addams and from me - you really made a difference.

Only mildly RELATED (because mountains) but felt like sharing - One of my favourite mountains is up for sale because the local aristocrat who owns the land needs to pay off some inheritance tax. A community group (which I am involved with in a small way) has been put together to raise money to buy it for the community rather than allow it to be owned by some Russian billionaire or something. Anyway, the deadline for bids has now passed, so now we Wait For It in anticipation. Here's a BBC news piece on it. I'd watch just for the pretty aerial shots of the mountain.

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Heartfelt thanks from addams and from me - you really made a difference.